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Copyright © 2010 Andrea Langworthy
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Last week, I watched a television show about nuns. Lisa Ling, a correspondent for The Oprah Show, was allowed inside a convent to get the scoop on how these women live. Why they’d eschew marriage and raising children for a vocation requiring vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Educated and disciplined by the sisters throughout grade school and high school, I was never allowed inside their living quarters and until I saw the show, didn’t realize there are over 60,000 nuns in this country. That’s a lot of rulers.
I was in grade school back in the 1950s and 60s. Almost daily, a schoolmate who talked in class or daydreamed would have a hand whacked by Sister’s ruler. A student who glanced at another’s test paper would be grabbed by the ear, yanked from his desk, and pulled by that same ear into the corridor to be reprimanded. Pity the poor child found picking his nose and wiping it on the underside of the desk. He’d have to stay after school to write 100 times on the blackboard, “I will not pick my nose and wipe it on my desk.”
I was in seventh grade when Sister Joseph Something-or-Other heard me laugh at another student’s whispered joke during study time. Sister moved towards me, a scowl on her face. I feared a form of public corporal punishment but she surprised me by saying, “Follow me.” I found myself in the tiny supply closet down the hall. Sister closed the door behind us and began to lecture me on wasting time, not working up to my potential, disappointing my dear parents, and on and on … I began to count the black squiggles in the linoleum until she asked in that sharp nun voice, “Do you?” I’d been lost in my tally and didn’t know what the question had been. I took a chance and answered, “Yes, Sister.” Whew! She opened the door saying she would expect better behavior from me.
Five years later, the day of my high school graduation, I faced a similar situation. Hours before our parents would arrive at our boarding school, friends and I walked down the long road leading from school towards the highway. We took turns being the lookout while the others smoked. Then, we headed back to finish packing and get ready for the ceremony. Trudging up the hill from the road, we met one of the nuns. She said we smelled of cigarette smoke and asked the question with no possible answer: “Have you been doing this all along or did you smoke today because we can’t punish you?” In unison, we answered, “No, Sister.” She told us to get out of her sight.
You can probably understand my anxiety when, 25 years later, classmates decided we should return to the school for our reunion. Many of our teachers were still there. Would they hold my old trouble-making behavior against me? I worried. Grab me by the ear and order me out of their sight? Whether they’d softened or I’d finally lived up to my potential, I’m not sure but they smiled at me. I was relieved that most had traded in their long, flowing habits with the deep sleeves in favor of tailored suits that couldn’t hide a ruler. I felt safe.